A design pattern which is carefully crafted to accomplish some result but does not have the user’s interests in mind.
23
votes
9answers
2k views
Your download will start in X seconds
Is there any reason why many websites - including very mainstream ones such as microsoft.com and sourceforge.net - show a page with "Your download will start in 10 seconds; if you don't want to wait ...
13
votes
6answers
1k views
Is implementing dark patterns unethical?
A recent question and discussion got me thinking - some UX practices are considered "dark patterns", and they're held up as bad UX from the user's perspective, though they can actually be good for the ...
9
votes
2answers
387 views
Is duping the consumer really a good business practice?
I have had this at the back of my mind for sometime and I believe UX is the proper place to post this though I may not phrase the question right so please chime in if you have suggestions!
There are ...
20
votes
11answers
451 views
Is “user experience” evil?
The discussion started when a fellow UI designer said that she was proud of working "making people lives better" as opposed to our fellows at the advertising dept, all day long "cheating people" ;-)
...
19
votes
7answers
2k views
Pop-under: Really that bad?
We're currently discussing to add pop-unders to one of our platforms to get users to use one of our notification features. As you can probably imagine, as a UX person I'm really against the use of ...
6
votes
1answer
167 views
Automatic agreement to terms of service
Is it acceptable (or even legal) to have "I agree to the terms and service" checkbox automatically checked when a new user signs up with our website? I'm trying to convince the person in charge to not ...
9
votes
3answers
325 views
Recording Debit/Credit Card Details at the start of a 'Free Trial'?
Does anyone have experience, analytics or similar on the impact of taking payment details at the start of a free trial period for a product?
It's one of the things I hate the most about trialing ...
3
votes
5answers
113 views
Showing users partial content to entice them to sign up?
I was trying to get one of my designers to check out a great question on Quora yesterday and he found to his annoyance that he had to sign up to read beyond the first answer
I was wondering if this ...
